Avoid Special Keys in Screen Sharing

Open Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing DoNotSendSystemKeys -bool YES

To restore the old behavior, change the last word to "NO." You can also use a plist editor if you're scared of the Terminal.

If you prefer the 10.5 behavior, wherein special keys are never sent to the remote Mac, there is a solution. It requires Terminal (in Applications -> Utilities), but only for one command. Launch Terminal, then copy and paste the following line (while Screen Sharing is not active):

[From Don't send special keys in 10.6's Screen Sharing | Mac OS X | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld]

SL Mail Fix: Copy Address w/o Carrots

Open the Terminal, type or copy and paste this in, and hit RETURN. Say bye, bye to the less-than and greater-than signs you see when you copy and paste an email address in Mail. If you prefer, use TextWrangler or some other editor to edit the com.apple.mail.plist file directly, though using the Terminal is easier.

defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool NO

[From Mac Daddy World » Blog Archive » Fixing “Copy Address” in Mail on 10.6]

ACL Found But Not Expected Weirdness

If you see a bunch of these messages when repairing permissions, here's how to deal with it:

if you try to repair permissions and get a bunch of acls found but not expected

to fix this some chmod commands need to be executed in the terminal.

Essentially open up a terminal and do the following:

cd /
ls -le

look at the Applications and Library folders in the listing and you should see they have specific ACLs. On one of my machines the Applications folder had 2 and the Library had one. On the other both had just one.

to remove these ACLs do the following:

sudo chmod -a# 0 "/Applications"
sudo chmod -a# 0 "/Library"

[From InsanelyMac Forum > How to repair "ACL found but not expected" message in disk utililty]

Make your own fun banner in Terminal

5 Ways to Use the Terminal in OS X, from Useful to Just Fun:

Just type banner followed by a phrase of your choosing to create a huge text banner. For example, banner Welcome to Low End Mac will create a banner out of the phrase "Welcome to Low End Mac."

It's pretty neat to watch it flow across the screen, but you can actually make a printable version.

First let's change directories to your Desktop:

cd ~/Desktop/

Then create a new blank file called banner.txt:

touch banner.txt

Now type your banner command, followed by > banner.txt:

banner Welcome to Low End Mac > banner.txt

The ">" directs the output of the previous command into the specified file. Double click the banner.txt file on your Desktop, and you'll see your printable banner in your default text editor.

Changing the login background

Neat for when you get tired of looking at the same ol' image.

macosxhints.com - 10.5: Change login panel background:

While attempting to get rid of the gaudy pink and purple Aurora login picture, I found that it is no longer enough to simply rename your picture of choice to Aurora.jpg and drop it in Desktop Pictures a la Aqua.jpg in previous releases.

To change the picture behind the login panel in 10.5, one must name the picture of choice DefaultDesktop.jpg, and drop it in to /System » Library » CoreServices. Doing this as the admin user is required for authentication purposes.

[robg adds: It's the simple things that can make using one's OS of choice more pleasant :). I used Terminal to create a backup of the original image first, just in case. After cding to the CoreServices directory, I then did sudo mv DefaultDesktop.jpg DefaultDesktop_old.jpg, then moved my new image in.]

Copy paths from the Finder

Need to copy a path to give someone instructions or tell them where to put something? Here are some ways to do it.

Macworld | Mac OS X Hints | Copy paths from Finder selections:

First, you can use the Services menu. In both 10.4 and 10.5, the Services menu works in the Finder. With the object whose path you’d like to capture selected in the Finder, choose Finder -> Services -> TextEdit -> New Window from Selection. A new TextEdit window will appear containing the full path to the selected item. Press Command-A to select it all, then Command-C to place it on the clipboard.

Another option is dragging the object from the Finder and dropping it into a TextEdit window (or a Terminal window). This will only work if your TextEdit document is in plain text mode—if you use rich text mode and drag in something TextEdit can open, such as a JPEG image file, the file will be opened. But with TextEdit set to plain text mode, you’ll instead see the path to the file or folder. Again, just select it and copy it to the clipboard, and you’re done. (Some third-party text editors support this feature as well; it works with Smultron on my machine, for instance.)

You can also copy any item (file or folder) in the Finder and paste it into Terminal. You’ll see the path on the command line; you can then select it with the mouse and copy it. You can also press Command-Space, then drag-and-drop the file into the Spotlight search box. Finally, you can drag a Finder window’s proxy icon—the small icon in the title bar of the window—into TextEdit (again, in plain text mode) to see the path to that folder. Select the path and copy it to your clipboard.

Mounting DMG - "Device not configured."

If you have trouble mounting an image with this error, open Terminal, paste in the line below, and hit ENTER. You're simply reloading the extension that handles image mounting.

DMG mount - device not configured - The macosxhints Forums:

sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/IOHDIXController.kext

No Unlock-a D' Folder

I just had a unique issue pop-up regarding locked folders. A folder inside my applications folder was suddenly locked for some inexplicable reason. I only discovered this when SuperDuper was trying to back it up to a sparseimage and failed with an error at that folder. So I did what most people do when they have any of a plethora of OS X problems that aren’t covered by the usual troubleshooting tricks--go to Google. This led me to Apple’s Support site, where I found this article and attempted these steps below: If the item you are trying to unlock is a folder,use these steps:         1.        Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities).         2.        Type this, followed by a space: sudo chflags nouchg         3.        Drag the folder you would like to unlock into the Terminal window.         4.        Press Return.         5.        Enter your password and press Return. If you have attempted to unlock a file in the Finder but it is still locked, follow these steps to remove the system immutable bit from affected files, which can cause this issue. Mac OS X 10.4 or later 1. Start in single-user mode 2. Type this, followed by Return: mount -uw / 3. Type this, followed by Return: 
/usr/libexec/register_mach_bootstrap_servers /etc/mach_init.d 4. Type this, followed by Return: autodiskmount 5. Type this, followed by Return: 
find / -flags schg -exec chflags noschg {} \; 6. Once this is finished, type this followed by Return: reboot Of course, the first set of instructions designed for a folder didn’t do the trick. But I booted single-user and typed in the long commands for fixing files, and this did do the trick!